News: RoboCop Remake Casting News

Jose Padhila’s remake of RoboCop continues to gather pace. Joining news of Joel Kinnaman’s casting as Murphy, the cop who’s gunned down and becomes RoboCop, are some very interesting names. Read on to find out more.

First up is news that Gary Oldman, who we’ll see this summer in The Dark Knight Rises, has signed on to playa character by the name of Norton, the scientist that designs and creates the RoboCop. It’s said that Norton “… finds himself torn between the ideals of the machine trying to rediscover its humanity and the callous needs of a corporation.”

Next up is Samuel L. Jackson. He’s already been busy saving the world as Nick Fury in The Avengers, but now he’s in talks to play a powerful and charismatic media mogul in the new RoboCop.

Finally is news that Abbie Cornish is currently in talks to play Murphy’s wife, who’s kept in the dark about what happens to him and believes she’s a widow.

Joel Kinnaman was recently asked his feelings on remakes and on RoboCop in particular – “I used to be like “Why are we doing a remake? What are remakes being done for?” But then, we do that all the time in the theater. If we weren’t doing remakes, nobody would know who Shakespeare was. I’m not saying that Robocop is Shakespeare, but it’s a way to … we’re retelling. That’s what we do as human beings. We retell our favorite stories. That’s what we’ve done since we were sitting around campfires. It’s a part of the human spirit. It doesn’t have to be negative to creativity. It can be completely opposite. That’s how you can break new ground by rethinking something that’s already been done. José has a completely different take on this than Verhoeven had, and with all respect, everybody that’s involved in this movie loved the original and we have a lot of respect for it. We’re going to have a lot of throwbacks and there’s going to be a lot of fun stuff for the fans of the first movie. It’s a new story within the old one.”

And then how he feels about working with Gary Oldman – “That feels about as surreal as me being RoboCop. I couldn’t be happier. He’s pretty much the grand master of the game. I still think it made everybody that voted for the Oscars look bad that they didn’t vote for Gary Oldman, because what he did is so difficult in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It’s a completely different kind of thing. I mean, I loved The Artist. I thought it was fantastic. I saw it early before the whole hype of it and I thought that French actor (Jean Dujardin) did a great job, but he’s more like that guy. I’ve seen him in interviews and he is a bit animated like that character. But, Gary Oldman disappears into his character. It’s so subtle. It’s so difficult what he does, and it’s something that I don’t think maybe two or three other actors could do on their best day in the world right now. It was a master’s performance and he’s on top of his game right now. He’s in his golden age. So, I’m very, very excited and we have great scenes that have a lot of the substance that I was talking about. It’s very much a relationship between Gary Oldman’s character and Alex Murphy.”

RoboCop starts filming in September and is due for release on the 9th August 2013.